achieving zen with mindful random

Sometimes Winning Takes A Lot Of Failing

Do you like to succeed in a public sense? Do you like to produce something remarkable that it becomes widely popular? Of course you do. Who doesn’t. But do you know what it takes to accomplish that?

Not surprisingly, it takes a lot of failing. Often times, when we start with anything we are met with disappointing failures. In the beginning, its mostly due to inexperience, lack resources and direction. We have all been taught, from childhood, that we must keep trying and, to be fair, most of us do give a decent number of tries for most of the things we take up. But sometimes stuff just doesn’t happen. You keep going at your goal over and over again, trying different strategies but the result is just the same crushing failure. Although, technically, the human spirit can take infinite hits and still remain strong, for most humans there is a finite, maximum number of defeats they are willing to take before giving up. Like I said, it takes almost inhuman strength to keep trying in face of repeatedly crushing defeats. But, like most things about life, this too can be overcome with practice.

When you start off, the goal itself is a pretty good motivator. The process of coming up with an action plan, then executing it while anxiously waiting for the end result is, mostly by itself, very rewarding. The prospect of all the joy expected to from your potential customers is also something that can spur your actions. But after the first few failed attempts, you need a different set of motivators, something from the inside. Why do you do what you are doing? If you really enjoy what you are doing, then the end result is just a small part of the puzzle. The process fuels the goal and, so, as long as its something you love to do there is no reason to hold yourself from doing it. Learn from every failure, tweak the strategy and find creative ways to utilize the resources. Whenever we find ourselves unambitious about our goal, we have to remind our brain why we started doing it in the first place. And as long as we have a good reason for it, no matter how many times we fail, with enough tries,there is nothing to do but win.

Take the case of George Weiss. He is the inventor of the board game Dabble which is being sold all over the country by a major toy company. Before Mr. Weiss, who is 84 years old, came up with this very successful game, he had failed a mind numbing 80 times.He had tried his hand in creating different things like, cube cards ( a variation of greeting cards), something called convertible Christmas ornament but none of his works picked up any steam. He spent a solid 40 hours every week in his Brooklyn house basement scheming various things and never gave up. He has been working on Dabble, relentlessly, for the past 3 years and finally all his hard work paid off. Dabble has just won a Game of the Year Award and proved that Mr Weiss’s determination was worth it all along.

Real and obscure stories like this give us a true sense of how hard it is to actually be successful. Success, by itself, can generate a lot of adoration but the many failures that precede it are the ones that made it possible and they almost always remain unacknowledged. But if we can find the way to use these failures as our source of inspiration to keep trying then success is closer than we think.